By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain has closed its investigation into “cum-ex” dividend tax fraud, issuing its eighth and final penalty over a trading scheme that is estimated to have siphoned billions of euros from continental European states’ coffers.
The Financial Conduct Authority said on Tuesday it had fined Mako Financial Markets 1.66 million pounds ($2.1 million) for missing red flags when executing billions of pounds in purported Danish and Belgian trades for clients of convicted hedge fund founder Sanjay Shah’s Solo Group between 2013 and 2015.
The FCA, which has now slapped fines worth more than 30 million pounds on seven companies and one individual over cum-ex trading, said it found no evidence that clients of Solo owned the shares. Coupled with the high volumes of stock apparently traded, this was highly suggestive of financial crime, it said.
In cum-ex schemes, shares were traded rapidly to blur stock ownership ahead of a dividend payout, allowing multiple parties to claim tax rebates and exploit the tax codes of countries such as Denmark, Germany and Belgium. A crackdown has triggered bank raids, criminal and civil proceedings worldwide.
Mako CEO Trystan Morgan Schauer said the fine related to a business that had been closed almost a decade ago, noting the company was now a proprietary trading firm.
“Mako has nevertheless dedicated time and resources to strengthening its systems, controls and governance structure, including when on-boarding new businesses, to seek to prevent a recurrence of the matters set out in the (FCA) notice,” he added.
Mako qualified for a 30% reduction in the penalty for agreeing to settle and not disputing the FCA’s conclusions. Its fine would otherwise have been 1.89 million pounds.
British trader Shah, who has become the face of cum-ex trading, is appealing against a Danish 12-year jail sentence over tax fraud. He is being separately pursued in a 1.44-billion pound London civil case by Denmark’s tax authority SKAT.
($1 = 0.7942 pounds)
(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley, additional reporting by DhanushVignesh Babu in Bengaluru; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
